As Rush spent a full two hours on this morning's show trying to tear Howard Dean apart, while not once mentioning the new WaPo-ABC poll just out today outlining the real trouble that Bush and his Congressional Supporters are now in, we figure he must be pretty worried about what's happening.

We also figure the poll will go less reported than it ought to, so we'll try to help. It's the least we can do.

In addition to the headline figure that shows, for the first time since Bush's War on Iraq began, more than half of Americans now understand that the war has not made America any safer, it's a few of the nothing-but-bad-news-for-Bush internals that caught our eye.

Even without the proper investigation and reportage by the MSM on the unprecedented corruption of this administration, the American people seem to be getting the picture. Take a look...

Six in 10 respondents said Bush and GOP leaders are not making good progress on the nation's problems; of those, 67 percent blamed the president and Republicans while 13 percent blamed congressional Democrats. For the first time, a majority, 55 percent, also said Bush has done more to divide the country than to unite it.
...
The drop in Bush's approval ratings on fighting terrorism came disproportionately from political independents. In March, 63 percent of independents approved of Bush's job combating terrorism. By April this had fallen to 54 percent. And in this weekend's survey, 40 percent gave him good marks.
...
A plurality said Bush is doing worse in his second term than in his first, and 58 percent said he is not concentrating on the things that matter most to them --- the worst showing Bush has had in this measure in Post-ABC polls.

While the debate amongst the Left rages on (even here at BRAD BLOG on occasion) about which way Democrats should move --- to fight for their core values or move towards the Right --- the poll numbers are noteworthy, particularly in the current atmosphere where so little honest coverage is given to this Administration's failures by the Mainstream Corporate Media.

Those "Independents", as the poll demonstrates, are getting the picture. Without the Democratic party attempting to remake itself as Republican Lite.

And while the phony Red State/Blue State battle continues (phony, because most of the country lives smack dab in the Purple area, even while being largely underinformed and/or grossly misinformed, and the premise, put forward by Neo-Cons and Bush Supporters, but fallen for by too many on the Left, is simply meant as an attempt to shame the majority of Americans who live in the middle into choosing sides) the truth continues to make its way into the American conciousness.

Truth has a way of doing that. Sometimes, it just takes a while.

That said, perhaps now is a good time to remind Democrats once again that none of those numbers much matter. Not as long as the Republicans own the ballot box machinery. Pay attention. Or continue your "losing" streak.

UPDATE: On that point, it's also worth pointing out, as Stephanie Miller did on her excellent radio show this morning, that the "approval rating" numbers in this poll, just a few months after the November Election, are eerily similar to those "discredited" Exit Poll numbers you may have heard about. We just thought we'd mention that.

"That said, perhaps now is a good time to remind Democrats once again that none of those numbers much matter. Not as long as the Republicans own the ballot box machinery. Pay attention. Or continue your "losing" streak."

Yes, in_deed, that is the root message. Until we have voter-verified paper ballots and unrestricted access to cast those ballots, the neoconsters will remain in control. If you want to detect a latent neoconster just way "Not one line of code between a voter and a valid election" and watch them freak.

Since polls don't really mean much to someone that illicitly controls the votes, we can only use these numbers on people that believe that they do...democrats! We can use these numbers to push them toward investigating the Bush criminal machine. Then during the impeachment & resulting criminal trails offer up plea bargains - not to the top cabinet members - but to some mid-level persons that knew all the dealings - and BOOM - we use that evidence to send Bush away for a long time, along with his friends at the voting/energy corporations.

I have two fears.
Well, actually, I have many, but these are two that are apropos:
1) The vote rigging is important. Wildly important. Earth-shatteringly important. But it will never get play. My fear is that no matter how much evidence is revealed, the overriding attitude in America is that this is no more than sour grapes. It's not right, but what I get whenever I begin to mention the details and facts that have been revealed here, I get rolled eyes and 'get over it, already' attitudes, as if I'm some sports fan arguing over a blown call that happened in some big game.

Pleaase keep following this story. Please keep us posted. Because it is important. If not for this generation, than for the next one--perhaps our children will learn the lessons that their parents didn't want to know.

Which leads me to my next fear:

2) If not Bush, then who? Where is the conscience of the Democratic Party? Where is the cohesive opposition, willing to take a stand against these imperialists? I'm afraid that the Democratic Party is too busy tearing itself apart, trying to figure out what the hell it wants to be. Dean screams firery rhetoric, and the rest of the 'leaders' clear their throats, examine their shoes, and try to shuffle away. Say what you will about Dean, but at least he's trying. But I'm afraid that unless there's some sort of cohesiveness in the party, the GOP will stay in power regardles of their awful polling numbers, because there won't be anyone or any party strong enough to oppose even a weakened Repub party.

I agree in part, Dredd. But I have seen that is how they cut the story short. The coverage is of the coverage and not about the actual story. Just imagine if they did what the Sunday Times in the UK did, and showed the complete documents - then analysis about about what Bush and Blair said/did leading up the war - then continued investigation. In the context of that, the discussion of what everyone else in the media was doing would flow naturally into the discussion.

If all the news sources started reporting what all the other news sources were doing then the only thing we would gain is great apathy toward the media - but little progress about the actual point of the matter. I salute them for doing an end run around the issue. They pulled a Kerry.

Re: #4
SOJO, I like your thinking!
As South Africa and Chile have both held Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, so must America, in order to put this sorry chapter behind her. Then and only then with the conduct of free and fair elections can America deservedly boast the title as the World's Greatest Democracy and therefore be in a position to lecture others on issues of freedom and democracy.
In the meantime, once the last "Terrorist" has been released from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I suggest they keep the facility open for some new arrivals who truly hate freedom!

P.S. Australia manages to hold transparent, free and fair elections and it pains me to witness such a great nation as America floundering around with such a broken and compromised electoral system!

P.S.S. Blokes, we gave you a perfectly sound voting system for "no charge" way back in the 1880's.......how did you manage to stuff it up so comprehensively??

Jonathon Alter's Article which Brad links to in another thread, is a perfect illustration of the real enemy to focus on.

We will always have Nixons and Bu$hes. But the big story, which I try to point out in my post #6, above, is all about what has changed.

We had crooks and liars during the Watergate days. We had political corruption and lies. We had war crimes in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

But we had a difference ... the MSM ... were still patriotic and exposed the whole damn mess and that is why the shit came down upon the heads of the crooks.

Jonathon Alter goes thru the scenario of what would happen today if Watergate happened. The MSM would roll over and play dead and hope the neocons would scratch their belly.

That is why we must applaud every MSM article that sticks it to the MSM that is still practicing whoredom by spreading admin propaganda and leaving out the investigative journalism of the Watergate kind.

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps USAToday is serious about pushing the Dowing Street Minutes. In this case I would rather be wrong than right anyway. But I'm just not convinced these people have any interest in telling the truth.

Redouble your efforts, the shadow government is getting really unhappy!!!!!

"Some Bilderberg members expressed a wish to essentially invade the US with UN peacekeeping troops and confront Patriots. Bilderberg can't use the US military to carry out their dirty work because they are worried it would backfire as US troops would refuse to fire on their own citizens.

Many in the Christian Patriot movement have been saying that this would take place for a long time and have been ridiculed for doing so. However, this information lends credibility to an age-old warning handed down the generations, that one day the blue helmeted forces of world government would engage patriotic Americans sworn on defending their country.

The fact that we are causing Bilderberg so much annoyance in the first place should bring joy to us all! It only emphasises the fact that we are having a significant effect and should only redouble our efforts.

Estulin added that the security crackdown for Bilderberg this year was worse than ever. He almost didn't make it into the country after police and Interpol agents boarded his plane and lead him away for questioning. Estulin was able to shake them off by enlisting the help of his media contacts, who pressured the German government into letting him enter the country."

I agree that focus on the whoredom of the MSM is of utmost importance.

But I would go further in contemplating the line that runs from Watergate to the present. The primary change - central to so much - is corporate (and power, influence) consolidation and wealth redistribution. What is it - 1% of the population now owns 40% of the wealth? It was nothing like this in Nixon's time. There were also actual news organizations and a culture of journalism.

Taking into consideration the central fact of our time - the consolidation of wealth and power - we should think of what effects it would and does have. It seems to me that it would be largely undemocratic and authoritarian (as some of our founders feared) it would act as a center of gravity taking other institutions into its orbit. It is not surprising to me that MSM has devolved into a PR arm of the central power establishment.

PR, I guess, could be considered a form of slanted, incomplete news, but it is not journalism. Really, it seems a stretch to call it news. I believe "alternative" news sources are not alternative at all but are *the* news sources. I think we have to get used to their revolutionary character. They don't exist solely to reform the MSM. The societal and political line from Nixon to the present and the fact of wealth and media consolidation presents an immense structural problem in any effort to persuade the MSM to cover issues as it should. We can, however, work on the MSM in pursuit of specific goals - in fact, we have to. There is no choice. But independent sources must face the fact that they themselves are the future.

The basic practical cultural problem is that most of our society is MSM embedded. That's why IM (independent media) has to imbue MSM with reasons to tell the truth. That's a big part of our job, I think.

We are coming to the end of the culture of bigness and gross corporate accumulation of power - what I think can be designated as an era from the end of WWII to now. (We will have passed a major milestone when some politicians begin to acknowledge it.) IM, Friedman (Brad, not Tom), and most of us are (often unconscious) initiators of the future.

I'm going way off track. Sorry. In regard to the USA Today article, I agree with Dredd that it is very important at this time to put some fear into the MSM of losing the public trust. But the article has kind of an ombudsman feel to it - like the kind of self-examining weekly column that our local editor writes that nobody reads.

I don't see it as a diversion. I see it as a sincere effort of rather clueless writer who still doesn't see the story as front page material. But I'll never say "all or nothing". Keep it afloat, and we should be looking for followups and similar articles to see if there is a trend. That's the important thing.

I would only add that the consolidation of wealth and power in this administration has the face of big oil showing thru.

Big oil that is manipulating the policy, practice, and foreign experience into one of militant tactical plays. Those plays (in the form of war, etc.) are aimed at controlling geography that has oil or exerts influence (intimidation included) over geography that has oil.

They are doing it in a manner that exposes them as either diabolical power grabbers, or as those who firmly believe in PEAK OIL (link here, and here).

If you think those poll numbers are bad, just wait a bit. Our economy is headed at breakneck speed for a cliff that has no bottom. Washington now borrows three billion per day from foreigners, and the central banks of Japan, China, S. Korea, etc. are getting leery about extending more credit. The Federal Gov't is now directly monetizing new debt--i.e, printing dollars to buy ITS OWN NEW DEBT ISSUES. The world is awash in debt, hedged and leveraged to the hilt, with the derivative balloon now at an unfathomable 300 TRILLION dollars.

The housing bubble, which is global, seems to be popping in Australia and London. It will likely begin imploding here in this county over the next few months. And when it does, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack will be dragged down, leaving the Federal Gov't to cover the trillions in bonds they've sold--and guaranteed. In next order go the pension funds, the stock and bond markets...

When inflation hits a hundred percent a year and unemployment is at 40% and people are literally starving in tent cities, people aren't going to blame Bill Clinton. They're going to remember the 90's as a golden era. And they're not going to much care for the martial law that Bush&Cheney impose as civil unrest spirals rapidly into armed rebellions.

No WP, Matt isn't a troll. He's just uninformed about the Bilderbergers, whose annual conference was illegally attended by members of the "Administration." These are the power-brokers of the western corporatocracy, who want to own the world and all of us humans within it. They are the great "Satan" of commerce gone wild and feral.

Perhaps they do indeed intend to take over governance of the United States. BushCo is behind them. We'll die first. I, for one, will not give the world away.

For Unirealist: I'd add that consumers have maxed out on their home equity through second mortgages and equity lines of credit. This should mean that they've been able to pay off their credit cards and save all that brutal interest.

In fact, the opposite has happened. As home equity debt has risen, so has credit card debt. With the new law making it harder to declare bankruptcy, we can be sure that when the economy starts imploding, foreclosures will accelerate the process. Bush won't be impacted, but his historical standing will.

RLM #23
Bush won't be impacted??? I can't imagine anyone in the US who will be more impacted, lest it be Mr. Greenspan, who will probably be hung from a lamp post. I have returned to this theme again and again in my posts: the warped political scene in our country echoes the warped economic one. I love the dialogues here, but so much of what is said focuses on the political, and doesn't grasp that those issues derive from the economic. The rise of the Fundamentalist Right did not occur in isolation. It came with the slide into national bankruptcy. Freedom is an expensive luxury; in good times it is granted, and in hard times it is taken away. In the 60's the US was rich, and freedoms plentiful. Now we are impoverished, and all freedoms are reduced.

Since about 1969, this country has actually had a negative GDP. The pie has been shrinking, and everybody has been fighting to hold onto their own slice. Debt has skyrocketed because one of the strategies for preserving one's share of the pie is to borrow from the future--which is what debt, in the last analysis, amounts to--a loan from the future. We actually had a chance, during Carter's Presidency, to face the truth and change our ways. Instead, the people chose illusion, and elected Ronald Reagan. The night he was elected, I kissed America good-bye. And Clinton changed nothing. He merely found a way to hide our growing debts as a stock market bubble.

So, yeah, it's over. Politically, economically, and every other way. What we're actually doing here is organizing, without even realizing it, for the future, when all those trillion dollar debts come due. We are gathering evidence for the TRIALS to come, just like before the French Revolution. We are trying to understand how this happened in spite of our great Constitution, so that we can prevent it from happening next time, to our grandchildren and great grandchildren. And--we are getting ready for the final assault on liberty, when the corrupt administration and all its pissant minions try to hold onto their power with martial law.

And I do thank you for all the wonderfully cogent and insightful posts you have offered us.

[Australian ballot]
A system of balloting or voting in public elections, originally used in South Australia, in which there is such an arrangement for polling votes that secrecy is compulsorily maintained, and the ballot used is an official ballot printed and distributed by the government.

Here's a wiki link to info about the "Australian Ballot" or "Secret Ballot" and its
adoption in the United States and elsewhere.

Australia still runs a paper based compulsory preferential voting
system where every vote is hand counted at every polling booth by unpaid volunteers who "work" for the Australian Electoral Commission (a non party- political 100% government funded organization)
The AEC maintains the Electoral Roll of all eligible voters (all those mentally competent over the age of 18yrs not currently serving a prison sentence) on an electorate by electorate basis.

Upon your arrival at your polling booth, you are offered "how to vote" flyers by each candidate's representative, beyond this point, NO-ONE other than the voters, AEC officials and occasional media are permitted/authorized to enter the polling precinct. (Our system DOES NOT allow Voter Challengers)

As each voter enters the booth, their name is crossed off the roll before being handed the voting forms representing each parliamentary house.
Each polling corral has a high tech pencil and a valid vote is recorded when a consecutive number is placed in each box alongside each candidate in order of preference.

Present at each polling booth count are representatives of each political party along with independents, the media and interested members of the public who are FREE to WITNESS and VERIFY the counting of each vote.

The computer tallying of each electorate including the distribution of preferences is conducted solely by the AEC.
If a re-count is requested by any of the candidates, the paper ballots are once again manually counted.
Redistribution of electoral boundaries is transparently performed by the AEC in a totally non-partisan fashion.

When the result is finally declared, I may be pissed off with the outcome and harbour grave suspicion of the biased MSMís role it, but unlike you guys, I donít loose sleep wondering whether my vote or my neighbourís vote was fairly counted.

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I have to push the pram alot!
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I think the point to emphasize regarding the Downing Street minutes is that the issue was fully vetted in the British election campaign...AND THE CLAIMS MADE AGAINST BUSH AND BLAIR WERE NOT REFUTED.

The issue went through the press cycle of point and counterpoint. It was also aired fully in Parliament. And the charge stood up! Bush and Blair can't sit in the White House and fool everybody now, after the British public examined the whole issue and found it legitimate.

The MSM could clean up their act by keeping this in mind: FACTS AREN'T LIBERAL. The way the rightwingers get facts out of the MSM reporting, is to cry that a story is liberal, and to float a counter-story that isn't factual into the MSM to confuse the facts. When this happens, the MSM fails by either not reporting the factual story, or reporting both the factual story and the rightwing non-factual counter-story, so readers/viewers are then left to think that everyone's lying, which is "mission accomplished" by the rightwing. The MSM must simply print factual stories and not bend to cries of the rightwing claiming "facts are liberal". Of course they don't like facts that make them look bad!